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FIRinG Line GUEST: MICHAEL HARRINGTON

SUBJECT: "EXAMINING POVERTY IN AMERICA"

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SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Communications Association , 928 Woodrow St. , P 0 . Box 5966. Columbia. S C., 29250 and is transmitted through the facilities of .the Public Broadcasting Service. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the cou ntry. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area .

SECA PRESENTS ®

FIRinG Line

HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

GUEST: MICHAEL HARRINGTON

EXAMINER: ALAN REYNOLDS

SUBJECT: "EXAMINING POVERTY IN AMERICA"

FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL

This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped November 13, 1984, in New York City and telecast later by PBS. SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

MR. BUCKLEY: Michae l Harring ton has , as usual, written another book. I indulg e a moment ' s nostalgia t o recall that the very first tape of Fi r ing Line over 18 years ago fea tured Michael Harr ing ton . The s econd f ea tured Michael Harring t o n ' s ideological godfather , Norman Thomas . Yes , Mr . Harring t o n is a socialist , almost certainly the most prominent socialist in America. I would like to be able to s ay that he is uniquely a social ist . Unhappily , there are a few others , though few , i f a ny , as g ifted.

Michael Harrington is best known as the author of The Other America , the book descr ibing the plight of the poo r in the United States that trigg e red the rash of programs designed to e liminate that pover ty. That was 20 years ago , and the f ind ings today are not encourag ing. As t o the f i gures , we will get into them in due course . Mi c hael Harring ton was born in St. Louis, a ttended Holy Cross College , did postgraduate work at the Yale Law School and at the University of Chicago , helped t o edit, during the period that he was a cathol i c , The Catholic Worker , has served as professor of poli tical science at Quee ns Co l leg e , has been chairman of the De mocratic Socialist Organizing Committee and is now co - chairman of the Democratic Soc ialists of Amer ica.

Our examiner will be Mr. Alan Reynolds , the chief economist of the consulting f irm of Po lyeconomics, Inc. More about Mr. Reynolds in due course .

I should like to beg in by asking Mr . Harring t on whether he acknowledges a distinction between the so-called deserving poor and the undeserving poor .

MR . HARRINGTON : Yes and no . It's a distinction that goes back to England--it goes back t o the first Elizabe th actualiy--and it ' s the d istinction between those poor people who are able to work and those poor people who , through no faul t of their own , are simply unable to work, and obviously there is such a d istinction , but I would argue the reason I ' m a little bit queasy about it is a lot of people who don ' t work don ' t work not because they ' re really not able , but because there ' s not the opportunity . But, sure, there is a distinction between , let ' s say , the welfare poor , who have no possibility of getting off welfare because of their age or phys ical condition , and the working poor , some of whom are in the labor force, some of whom are not .

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, would there be an in-between class which might be described as those disinclined to work?

MR . HARRINGTON: I think it's very small. There was a Brookings study in--

MR . BUCKLEY: I didn ' t ask . you how big it was. I asked whether there was such a class.

MR . HARRINGTON : I wouldn ' t call it a class . I would call it a marg inal group between the two categories .

MR. BUCKLEY: There is a term used by-- Oh, dear me . In any

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case , he refers to people who are lacking the ethos to move, the structural pull or something of the sort. Without asking for figures, would you say there is such a class in America- i.e. , those for whom the motives to enhance their income by moving from welfare to work are insufficie nt to prod them in that direction?

MR . HARRINGTON: Again I ' d say a very small group . And let me give you an example , courtesy of the Reagan administration . As you know, in '81- ' 82, the Reagan administration reduced , or cut , food stamps and Medicaid for people at 125 percent of the poverty line . The people they mainly go t by doing that were work i ng poor people who, because the ir income was so low , still qualified under the previous prog ram for food stamps and Medi caid . They took away the food stamps and Medicaid. There was a widespread prediction that these people now , being shrewd calculators, would leave their work and go and get on we l fare , which would not only bring them the welfare check, but the food stamps and Medicaid. The evidence that the Reagan administration has presented us with suggests that they did not; suggests that even among the working poor--the people at the very bottom of the occupational heap-- there is a very strong i ncl i nation to work .

MR . BUCKLEY: Isn ' t what you ' re saying something that I think very few people would dispute , namely that some people simply refuse to take charity of any sort and whatever it is they need to do to eke out a l iving, they will proceed to do that? In point of fact, I think there are some religious sects that decline charity, aren ' t there?

MR . HARRINGTON: Right.

MR . BUCKLEY: The Amish, for i nstance. So what you ' re saying is , sure , there are some people who will work no matter what , but at the other end , there are some people who prefer welfare benefits over against the exertion of working .

MR. HARRINGTON: Well , let me give you, again courtesy of the Reagan administration , in this case Rudolph Penner , the head of the Congressional Budget Office--

MR . BUCKLEY : You're suddenly grateful to the Reagan administra tion.

MR . HARRINGTON : When they give me data to make my argument, I take i t gratefully . Penner testified about a year ago before the Congress about the t ypical person receiving aid for ' families with dependent children-- that's the typical welfare case in the United States- - and he pointed out that half the women who receive AFDC do so for two years or less, that the reason they go to AFDC is not a disinclination to work , but because a man walks out on them , leaving them with children that they can ' t support and that they get off of AFDC-- this is roughly half --within two years by going to work; that the number of people who are , so to speak, permanently on AFDC-- in this case those women who

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receive AFDC for eight years or more --is 15 percent o f the total. So is there-- Now , is that e ntire 15 percent composed of peopl e who are shirking work? I very much doubt it. Some people- -

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR. HARRINGTON: --are pushed t o the wall, et cetera. So I think it's-- We're really talking about a ve ry small group of people who prefer welfare to work.

MR. BUCKLEY: Wel l, again, since neither of us can exactly fix the figure, we both concede--do we not?--that there are some people who go from year to year on we l fare , receiving AFDC aid and various other kinds. We also concede that the r e is a tre mendous movement of people who are in poverty one year and out of poverty--

MR . HARRI NGTON: Absolutely.

MR. BUCKLEY : --tne nex t year . In fact, as I unders t and it, 60 percent of those people in poverty will no t be in poverty, or have not been, for two years running .

MR. HARRINGTON: Right.

MR. BUCKLEY: Okay.

MR. HARRINGTON: It's in and out--

MR. BUCKLEY: Okay.

MR . HARRINGTON: --is the real pattern .

MR . BUCKLEY: Now, if I may, you argue rather ingeniousl y in you r book that critics of the existing p r og rams from the other side of you assign mean ingless importance to the business of non-cash benefits because, as you put it somewh e re, theoretically if you deve loped a long cance r and gobbled up thousands a nd tho usands and thousands of do llars a year and you put a cash v alue on that Medicaid, you'd find yourself a member of the upper midd l e class.

MR . HARRINGTON: Right .

MR. BUCKLEY : Now , g ranted that there are aberrant statistics and hard cases make bad law and so forth , isn't it true that by and large a reasonable price--a reaso nable va lue--can be attached t o these benefits , the effect of which would arguably reduce the number of people in poverty, perhaps not as low as eight and a hal f percent , perhaps no t as hig h as 11 percent, but somewhere in the re?

MR. HARRINGTON : Leave the statistics aside. Yes. That is to say , I think it's absolutely fair t o say about poo r people that one should count, in addition t o their cash income , the v alue o f

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food stamps . That ' s pretty easy . Food stamps are denominated in dol lars and you buy--

MR . BUCKLEY : Yes , and you can ' t overeat in the sense that you can overconsume medical expenses .

MR . HARRINGTON : But the rea l trick comes with the main-- The l argest single program is Med i caid . Fo r openers , 40 p~rcent of that goes to peop le in nurs ing homes , 1mpover1shed, ag1ng _ . people who are dying. Now , that ' s my category , a not 1ns1gn1-ficant category because the program had cost , the l ast I l ooked , $35-40 billion .

MR. BUCKLEY : Well , intending not to ask a question that sounds coarse , what are the expenses of people who are dying? What are their needs?

MR . HARRINGTON : Well , it can be , if they ' re ge tting first-c lass medical care in between their times off from Med i care and Medicaid , that it can be very expensive . But leave that as i de . I ' m perfectly wi lling to say that we should count--and I say in my book-- fa ir enough , let's count the cash value . I don ' t want to bore everybody to death . It's very difficul t t o say what is the cash va l ue even for a younger person of med1cal care. Does one assume that the federal gove rnment spends 100 percent wisely? Strangely enough , in this area conservatives have enormous faith in the efficacy of feder al spending .

MR. BUCKLEY : Sure .

MR . HARRINGTON : But let's say that , yes , we s houl d ~ount it. What bothers me about the peop l e who talk about the 1n- k1nd benefits is t hey on l y look at the possibility that we are overestimating poverty--

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes .

MR . HARRINGTON : --whereas there are some very real possibilit i es that we are underestimat ing it , and I would like all of us- -


MR. HARRINGTON: --to sit down and try to get to some kind of agreement.

MR. BUCKLEY : You make a point of that in your book , and of course you t ake an even broader generality . There is, of course, a spiritual poverty on the basis of whic h you can get even more. comprehensive f i gures . It simply does n ' t fol l ow that people mak1ng $8 , 000 a year , which is l ess than poverty level, are ne~essar1ly happier t han people mak ing $80 , 000 a year . At a certa1~ level t hey obv i ously are . They do no t want for food and med1c1ne . Bu t since we know that such a high f i gure of those peop l e who are poor are the e l derly , the sort of nursing home--v i c tims is perhaps not the appropriate word-- But for instance , 15 years ago I_took Frank Chodorov , who was a form i dable mentor 1n the conservatlVe

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movement, to the Mary Manning Walsh Home, and what they took from him was his Social Security . They said, "Okay , you give us your Social Security and we 'l l look after you ," which they did . Now, he'd be classified as poor in your reckoning and in the Commerce Department's reckoning , wouldn't he? But he had no expenses at all . Now , how do you cope with him, or do you bother to try to cope with him?

MR . HARRINGTON : No , po; two things here, but one , by the way , the number of aging people who are poor has gone down .

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes.

MR . HARRINGTON: It ' s one of the real accomplishments.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR . HARRINGTON: Only about 15 percent now . Secondly , what I am talking about is not the case of somebody who is paying a nursing home. I'm talking about the case of somebody who qualifies for- - It's Medicaid, which i s nursing homes. They have to sort of-- Sort of? They -have to officially pauperize themselves . They can ' t have anything. They have to g ive up everything . Now, you 're quite right that these people have -Their needs are not very great , but they also might, through Medicaid , be getting all kinds of medical care at the same time--operations and the like--which can be very expensive. So my point is that I think that one of the things that bedevils this whole in-kind argument is, in dollar terms , one of the largest single components of it is a service which it is very difficult to estimat e the value of--

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR. HARRINGTON : --particularly in terms of , "I hope I never get this help from the state ."

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes . If I were to g ive you a $100 , 000 present of a quadruple bypass operation, it would not make you a rich man .

MR. HARRINGTON : Right.

MR . BUCKLEY : Okay. Now, let's then move forward and take up one or two of the points advanced, I thought rather thoughtfully, by Charles Murray . He says, "Look, something very odd happened. We began the poverty program pursuant to the instructions of Michael Harrington 20 years ago, and it worked for awhile, but then it began to stop working, and certain other data began to strike our attention , among them this incredible rise in the increase of illegitima te children." Now, since. there is a correlation between poverty and the number of people who grow up with single-parent households, the observer is entitled to conclude that poverty will rise with the rise in illegitimacy, so that if illegitimacy doubles , poverty will, if not exactly double , certainly rise substantially. Question :

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What is it that the expenditure of money has or has not to do with the coherence of a family uni t?

MR . HARRINGTON : See, two things there. One , if you look very carefully at Murray ' s book , he has got a fascinating statistic there, one that most people don't get . The proportion of black single women having babies out of wedlock has dropped dramatically.

MR . BUCKLEY: In the last 10 years?

MR. HARRINGTON : Dropped, yes. The proportion of black women. What confuses people, if you take black out- of - wedlock--

MR . BUCKLEY: Is the--

MR . HARRINGTON: --births as a percentage of total births, since white births are going down, the black percentage of the out of - wedlock births has been going up, but Murray ' s point is in his book that the actual proportion of young black women having out-of-wedlock children has been declining over the past 10 or 20 years .

MR. BUCKLEY : But you can't deny the actual figures , can you? That is, for instance, it has gone up 300 percent in New York City.

MR . HARRINGTON: No, you see, that ' s a percentage of total births, and what is hidden in that statistic-- Statistics ge t very tricky , and I am thankful to Murray- -

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, there aren't that many white people in Harlem .

MR. HARRINGTON: No , no , no. We're talking about-- When you say that 50 percent or 55 percent of the black births in New York are out of wedlock .

MR . BUCKLEY: Okay. Okay, the percentage of black babies born to single women went from 17 in 1950 to 55 in 1980. What do you do with that one?

MR. HARRINGTON: I would simply refer you to Murray's l:look and say that he would say, "Put that way , it 's inaccurate." There are ways to put it--

MR. BUCKLEY: I didn 't get that from you. I got that from Dr . Saul Blumenthal .

MR . HARRINGTON: But I think- - I frankly was surprised. Murray

~~~~~~~=~ m~~t~~da~c~~~u~~~ti~h:~:.: ~o~~o~~~~i~=~e.Se~~:~l~~e of the things that bothers me about Murray--whom I debated . recentl y at the City University and I discovered_ls a L1bertar1an more or less--one of the things that bothers me 1 s he has got a totally economistic account of social behavior, and what he

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says is , "Here are out- of- wedlock births , here are poverty programs , post hoc ergo propter hoc , because the poverty programs were there prior and the births are there after, therefore the poverty programs caused-- "

MR. BUCKLEY: He might say, " I won ' t make a post hoc ergo propter hoc, but I will simply make it a fascinating coincidence . "

MR. HARRINGTON: No , see, I would say-- and I said in the book before this one , called The Politics at God ' s Funeral--that I believe our entire so ;~ety --not just the poor , but the entire society--are in the midst of some kind of spiritual crisis. I think that there is a problem of ethical values and norms for everyone. I think that when that problem of norms then becomes a problem in an impoverished world of great physical and moral and psychological suffering, that it can have these consequences . But I would paint a much larger picture--

MR . BUCKLEY : Well , I --

MR . HARRINGTON : for that matter.

--economic , social, psychological and religious,

MR . BUCKLEY : No , I agree with you about the spiritual crisis , even if we have different ideas of what to do about it . But I wonder whether the bearing of that spir i tual crisis that you identify isn ' t such as to render nugatory your principal findings about poverty . For instance , take-- How do you handle a simple statement by Dr . Saul Blumenthal? When asked to account for the growth in illegitimacy , he says , "Well, people who were in that class " - - i.e . , illegitimate parents- - "were once held to ridicule and abuse , but now if there i s no father around, there is nothing to berate anybody about." What does that betoken when one accepts illegitimacy as perfectly normal?

MR. HARRINGTON : See , but I don't think that has anything to do with Aid for Families wi~h Dependent Children. I think the norms in th i s soc i ety are changing.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but if the ethos is crumbling, that does have something to do with some of it , doesn ' t i t?

MR. HARRINGTON: No , it does not say to me that i t is necessarily crumbling because of welfare state programs , and indeed, let me just give you something from--

MR. BUCKLEY : It can be philosophical libertinism .

MR . HARRINGTON : Sure , sure . But that ' s what I ' m saying , that Murray puts everything in terms of homo economicus , and I think that that's a very dangerous thing to do whether you are a conservative or a Marxist . It ' s vulgar in either case .

MR . BUCKLEY : So you're saying that the father who is disposed

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t o desert his child as soon as he finds out that his girl is preg nant is lUSt as likely to desert that child in a welfare age as i n a pre- wel fa re age b e cause his conscience cannot be stimulate d--

MR . HARRINGTON : No , probably not . However --

MR. BUCKLEY: -- to take a fatherly inter est in his own responsibility?

MR . HARRINGTON: As you know, in a number of states-- by no means all of them- - but in a number of states now, as a result of laws passed in the 1960s , it is possible legally for an able- bodied man to be in a home with a mother receiving AFDC . That is to say , it used to be that in all the states , AFDC gave an incentive to break up a family.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR. HARRINGTON : In the mo re advanced industrial states that is no longer the case , and yet it is precisely-- And you don't have a difference in this conduct where the incentive exists in New York , or where it doesn ' t exist-- that is to say , where the man can stay with the woman with no loss of money--or where it does exist in Mississippi . And what I ' m saying is that I find Murray flawed in general because of this --

MR . BUCKLEY : Well , but perhaps not flawed within the context of his own reasoning because the father stays-- is permitted in most industrial states now to remain with the woman who is the mother of their child, but he can leave without visiting on that child or on his former girlfriend the kind of hardship that would have been meted out to her before , right?

MR . HARRINGTON : Right .

MR . BUCKLEY : So therefore there is an economic impact .

MR. HARRINGTON: However , let me give you a standard current statistic, which upsets a little bit of this theory . The average size of the AFDC family is 2 . 6 children . · That is to say , it is slightly higher , slightly more children , than--

MR . BUCKLEY : Th an the 2.1 or whatever it is .

MR . HARRINGTON: -- than the average American family , and what I ' m saying i s you remember that most women who get AFDC do so precisely because the man walks out . They briefly get AFDC , . and they get off as fast as they can. That-- Now , does th l s put a little less pressure on the man? Yes . Should ther~ be some ways of really insisting on fathers living up to the l r responsibilities? Yes . But does this say that it is the existence of AFDC that primarily or principally accounts for an increase in out- of- wedlock births? No .

MR . BUCKLEY: Well, what you're really saying , Michael, it

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seems t o me, is that the economi c arguments having t o do with this whole mess are basically i rrelevant. So you could be talking about the decline of t he spirit of the West and you could be Voegelin o r you could be Spengler or you could be Whittaker Chambers , you could be anybody with that cast of mind about what ' s happening to the Wes t.

MR . HARRINGTON: No , because , you see , I don ' t say that it ' s i rre l evant . Let me g ive you an example .

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes .

MR . HARRI NGTON : I t hink in the b l ack community - - and th i s i s something that Murray brings up I do n ' t th i nk he deals with well - -but if you look at the black commun i ty , you discover that women are more likely to work . Black women are more l ikely to have a j ob than b lack men . And I th i nk that t h is goes al l the way back into our racist past where women could ge t jobs as domestics rather ea sil y , and a tradition was establ ished where women we r e of t en the pr i ncipa l breadwinners in black families , not becaus e the men were l azy , but because the r e were no opportuni t i es for steady, regula r , eve n low- paid work for these men . I would argue that al l o ther t hing s being equal , which they never are , if we were to achieve the unemp l oyment rate advoca t ed by the Ca tho lic bishops in their r ecent pastora l letter on capitalism-- that is, three to four percent- -

MR . BUCKLEY : Yes , t he Humphre y- Hawkins letter .

MR . HARRI NGTON : Yes , the Humphrey - Hawkins l etter indeed . If we were to have that , I would expect to see a certa in decrease in many of these prob l ems because I think t here is an economic aspect . I don ' t think that three t o four percent will solve everything, believe me I don't , but I do think t hat making i t possible for a b l ack man to be an economi c father as well as a b i o l ogical fa ther will have an impact on some of these probl ems .

MR. BUCKLEY : But unemployment among young blacks has soared since almost exactly the f ounding of the Grea t Society.

MR. HARRINGTON : Right .

MR . BUCKLEY: Six or s eve n percent of t he blacks--young blacks-were unemployed in 1945. So you see , almost pari passu , the more we have the Great Society and welfare , t he more unemploy ment there is among blacks.

MR. HARRINGTON : Now , see , there goes post hoc ergo propte r ho c again.

MR. BUC KLE Y: No, no , no , no . No , no. I ' m saying the se two phenomena are accompanying each o the r , and it is probably more reasonable t o infer a r e lationshi p than not to in f er a relationship.

MR . HARRINGTON : See , but at the same time -- Murray and I

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happen t o agree o n something . This is Mur ray ' s point . We happen to agree that poverty , after being eliminated somewhat-Some gains were made in the 1960s, but somewhere around 1968- 9-70 that we stopped eliminating poverty ; that roughl y , I would sa y , fr 0m ' 69 -' 79 i t went up and down b u t basically stayed stabl e , and fr om ' 79 unti l the present it has gone up every year. And Murra y ' s argument is that at that exact moment where the corner was turned and where the progre ss ended , these programs came o n l ine, to which I say many things , but one of the thing s I say is that at that same moment , the American economy became more open to international competition , the American occupational str uctur e shifted i n such a way that it was no l o nger producing r e l ative l y well-paid smokes t ack jobs ; what was considered to be the norma l rate of unemployment after every recess i on from ' 69 --

MR . BUCKLEY : Rose .

MR. HARRI NGTON: -- t o the present rose , rose and r ose .

MR . BUCKLEY : But also more and more people were asking for emp l oyment . Did you take that into account?

MR. HARRINGTON: Sure. But what I ' m say ing i s that Murray puts--that the argument , I won ' t j ust say Murray-- that the argument that a l l of th i s is to be exp lained by motivation--For example , let me g i ve you a stunni ng fac t that I th i nk he overlooks . He points ou t that between 19 55 and 1980 there has been a dramatic decrease in black labor force male participation . In 1955 black males and white males were in the labor force in roughly the same percentage : 85 percent . Now the blacks have dropped about 13- 14 percent; the whites have d r opped about t hree or four percent . And his argument is the bl acks did this because all the s e poverty programs came o n l ine in ' 69-' 70 . The problem , that at that ver y same momen t black female labor force participation went up . The females inhabit the same incentive world as the males , and indeed , the y have one more i ncentive called AFDC . There is a p r og r am which , fo r a dults, is primarily available to mo thers . And I don ' t -- So that I think that what he is do i ng is he is explaining b y something-We had a marginal -- That there are some work d isincentives in poverty programs I have no doubt . That they are the main explanation for the decline in black ma le labor force participa tion does not hold because why are black wome n so different from black men? They have the same incentive s .

MR . BUCKLEY : We ll , l e t me ask you this . Do you have the figures for non-black women? We know that they went from 35 to 53 percent. That is t o say , after the s econd wor l d war, 35 percent of t he American people wanted t o work . Fifty three percent now do . Did they increase proportionately with the blacks?

MR. HARRINGTON: No . White women increased the i r labor force participation mor e than black wome n .

10 ©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

MR . BUCKLEY: Ah .

MR. HARRINGTON: And I would say that -- My explanation of that--

MR . BUCKLEY: So therefore there is an extraracial trend .

MR . HARRINGTON: But what I ' m saying i s that the difference between white women and black women is nothing like the difference between black women and black men , and if you are saying that it ' s the poverty program that caused people to ge t out of the labor market, the women should do so in at least some rough proportion to t he men, and they don ' t.

MR. BUCKLEY : But isn ' t your exp l anat i on for it , which would seem to go back two or three generations to the so- called castration of black men , isn ' t that l ess l ikely as a proximate cause , given that that ' s simply a traumatic memory--

MR. HARRINGTON: See , I --

MR. BUCKLEY : -- than the explanations of Mr . M~rray?

MR. HARRINGTON : Let me be quite frank .

MR. BUCKLEY: Sure .

MR. HARRINGTON: I do not think I can explain this phenomenon to my satisfaction .

MR. BUCKLEY : Right, right.

MR . HARRINGTON: I don ' t think anybody can .


MR. HARRINGTON: So I ' m not- - But--

MR . BUCKLEY : You just reject a particular explanation .

MR. HARRINGTON : But more than taat , it ' s not-- I ' m not just saying that it ' s cultural , it ' s the breakdown of the black family and so forth and so on ,. because one of the things that I mentioned in the book--and it struck me very strongly--is on occasions when I have talked to black trade unions - -one time when I debated a conservative before a union meeting here in New York-- I d i scovered that black trade unionists are as much committed to the Protestant ethic as --

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes.

MR. HARRINGTON: welfare--

--white trade unionists and are as anti -

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes.

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MR . HARRINGTON : --as the white trade unionists. So what I ' m saying is those blacks who had the opportunity to become members of the United Automobile Workers or the United Steel Workers or what have you who got a decent , stable job, not a casual job that was here t oday , go ne tomorrow , I think behave just the way my old friend A. Philip Randolph said they would behave : They behave like workers . But I think that what happened i s , particularly to the blacks who came up from the South after the second world war, that the economy simply was not creating the number of halfwa y decent entry- level jobs that it once was, and I think it ' s not just black culture , black psychol ogy ; it is black culture and black psychology in a certain economic setting of in tolerably high unemployme nt.

MR . BUCKLEY: You and I had this argumen t years ago . I remember concluding that you would like to pass a l aw that says that l emons and orange s can 't be permitted to grow i n any climate where the temperature reaches above 100 degrees . But quite apart from the question of decent and not decent jobs, could we perhaps be confronting a problem that Ke n Galbra ith has frequen tl y spoken about? He talks, for instance , about how Swedes import Turks to assembly line works , and he says that this is really the last generation in which blacks will consent to do assembl y line labor for the very simple reason that it is kind of unpleasant work . It may be remunerative , but it is kind of unpleasant. Now , we know we have e i gh t or 10 or 12 million unclass i fied Hispanics in this country. Is it that the y are ful f illing those jobs - - so- called me nial jobs--which were 25 years ago discharged by black men and black women? You touch on that in your book , but do you think that that affects the statistics?

MR . HARRINGTON: Yes , and as a matter of fact , I think the person who was talking about cr ime and not about jobs--but I think it really gets to a very important point- - Charles Silberman in his book , The Criminal Justice System. Silberman said that one of the problems about the United States is , particularly in the era of the mass society- - this was not true prior to , let ' s say , World War II or post- World War II --but in the era of the mass society everybody in the society is subject to the same consumer stimulus , to the same attitudes towards what ' s good and what ' s bad . They watch the same television shows. They get the same idea of what a good job is , what a bad job i s . To use the jargon , we are socializing the entire population in a single attitude towards work .

MR. BUCKLEY: You 're socializing the appetites of --

MR. HARRINGTON: Yes , yes , and that the problem , as Silberman points out , is that although we now have something like a single standard of what's a good job and a bad job, access t o good jobs and access to bad jobs are not single standard . That is to say, poor people have access to either no jobs or bad jobs . And I think, yes , there is a certa in reluctance , particularly if there is some alternative , and here I believe that a welfare program in some cases cou l d be a disincentive

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to work. But I think we can 't have our cake and ea t it. We have built this society o n telling these people what ' s a good job. We have built this society on te l ling them that they absolutely must have this kind of automobile , this kind of clothes , this kind of food, this kind of wine , and then when they discover that they can't have it or it takes great effort to even get a fraction of it and there is another alternative, some--a very few--will take it. But my point is that I think the problem is that they are making a choice which the society in some ways suggests t6 them .

MR . BUCKLEY : Well , why is it that you hold this ou t as having a Tantalus- like effect on people rather than holding it ou t as , say, Skinner would , as being an enhancer to certain kinds of conduct. If somebody sees a Cadil l ac- - an ad for Cad illac-and says , " Dammit , that ' s the car I want," surely his appetite is stimulated to work very hard t o save in order to buy a Cadillac , righ t?

MR . HARRINGTON : But , see , when-- I go back to my grandfather, Patr i ck Richard FitzGibbon , who came to the United States as a grade school dropout and worked on the railroad , who was a laborer , et cetera ; worked his way up , wound up in a nice house in St . Louis , Missouri , growing roses in the backyard. It ' s the classical immigrant story . But he , as a grade school drop out, came to an economy that allowed tha t to happen qui t e regular ly. Right now my students at Queens College , who are going to ge t a bachelor ' s degree , are learning that in this labo r market that we now have a bachelor's degree and 90 cents will ge t you a ride on the subway . That is to say that we have totally changed the rules so tha t if you have a group of people, let ' s say , who have dropped out of h i gh school now in a ghetto , they have a l most-- At that point they have condemned themselves to a fate that was never vis ited on my grandfather .

MR . BUCKLEY : Well , now , you say this with those kind of fatalistic accents associated with the old population explosion ~eople, but every time that kind of fatalism gets enunciated , it seems to me, in American history, something happens . In this last decade i t ' s been the microchip, which has, as I understand i t, increased the potential earning pow.er of everybody hugely . Now , it doesn ' t mean t hat you automatically learn how to translate that into an economic asset.

MR . HARRINGTON : Yes, but remember , the microchip is now permitting General Motors , as it announced right after the agree ment was signed with the UAW , to eliminate 100,000 jobs through robots . Secondly , you have to realize that although i n Sil i con Valley you've got a lot of people-- a few of whom are actually out in the garage inventing something great-- More power t o them. You have got some of those . You ' ve got many more wome n work i ng i n the production lines in Silicon Valley making jus t somewhat above the minimum wage , not very good jobs at all . Most of them , by the way, are women , and most of them are minority women , and it ' s axiomatic in this society that any job that is primarily held by minori t y women is not paid very well .

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MR . BUCKLEY : But if there are that many people making that many silicon chips , silicon chips aren ' t a substi tute for potato sti cks . They are presumably going to do something wh i ch magni f i es the power of that indi vidual --

MR . HARRINGTON : Right .

MR . BUCKLEY : --to thi nk , to perform a ca l cu l ation , to do whatever . Just as a garbage disposal hugely magni fied t he power of an individua l to dispose of garbage , so a chip can do complementary duties of an inte l lectual order .

MR . HARRINGTON ': But a l so remember the chip makes it possible to produce those bread sticks or whatever--

MR. BUCKLEY: Right, right .

MR. HARRINGTON : --with fewer people.

MR . BUCKLEY: Ye s .

MR. HARRINGTON: And what frightens me about th i s--

MR. BUCKLEY : Well , why should that frighten you? Because th i s would mean theoretically a contraction of the work i ng week--

MR . HARRINGTON : Ah , that ' s what I --

MR . BUCKLEY: --which, as a socialist , you ' ve a l ways been for anyway .

MR . HARRI NGTON: Of course.

MR. BUCKLEY : You .now work 40 hours a week--actually you work about 37~ when you count coffee breaks and so on--and our ancestors worked 50 percent more than that, right?

MR. HARRINGTON : Right , but the problem is--

MR . BUCKLEY: Your grandfather probably worked 70 hours a week .

HR . HARRINGTON : The problem is-- I ' m ver y much in favor of the 32 - hour week. I n Europe there is a Eu rope - wide trade un i on and socialist movement for the 35 - hour week . The problem is it's very difficult t o go to in this society. It ' s going t o take some real ingenuity . You can ' t do it , for example , through the wage system . If you sudde n l y had people working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay--

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR . HARRINGTON : --you ' re go i ng to kill the system .

MR. BUCKLEY : Sure.

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MR. HARRINGTON: So I think that we have to do - -

MR. BUCKLEY: You ' v e go t to increase produc tiv i ty . But fortunatel y , under Mr. Reagan we ' ve been doing that , haven 't we , for the last couple of years .

MR . HARRINGTON : Oh , I think there is a second ac t to come , Bill.

MR . BUCKLEY : I know, and the trouble with those second acts is that you al l l ook so happy when you--

MR . HARRINGTON : Yes .

MR . BUCKLEY : - - predi ct it , don ' t you?

MR . HARRINGTON : I ' m chuckling at the Greek tragedy tha t's abou t t o un fo ld.

MR . BUCKLEY : Are you reall y say i ng that the time has come when economic p r ogress is no longer predictabl e in the sense t hat it was i n the 19th century?

MR . HARRI NGTON : Ye s.

MR. BUCKLEY : You are .

MR . HARRINGTON : Even as predictabl e as it was up until about 1968 .

MR . BUCKLEY: And what data do you use other than simply intuitive data to reinforce that conclusion?

MR . HARRINGTON : We ll , one wou l d be that- - Busines s Week eve r y year runs a little story on how the pred i ctions from last year fared, end this i s intu itive but it could be checked ou t . My impression is that for the l ast 1 0 yea r s , all of the big econometric models have t ended t o be wrong, and not only wrong in degree , they go t the s i gn wrong .. That is to say, they predict growt h when there is a recessLon; a recessLon when there i s growth . You may remember that the ' 82 recession was supposed t o be a brief and shallow recession .

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes .

MR . HARRINGTON : It t urned-- And everybody agreed on that, including, alas, my fr i end Francois Mitterrand . That ' s one of the thing s that d i d him in. And in fact it was the deepes t a nd l onges t r ecess i on since the Great Depressi on.

MR . BUCKLEY : But this sort of Malthusian certitude with which you say tha t the era of economic progress has ended fares very badly--

MR. HARRINGTON : Oh , no .

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'l

MR . BUCKLEY : --when put up against similar seizures 100 times during the past 100 years .

MR . HARRINGTON : I ' m not saying that the possibility of economic progress has ended . I am saying that the possibility of economi c prog ress e ither on the basis of traditional liberal doctrine--

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR . HARRI NGTON : - - or on the basis o f Reaganomics is very much in question . The failure of liberal doctrine , I cite Jimmy Carter . The fa ilure of Reaganomi cs , I c ite the next two years .

MR . BUCKLEY : What makes you think that a coordinated political inte lligence can probe these problems more skil lfully or more productivel y than the free intelligence of people guided by their own ethos , ambitions , whatever?

MR . HARR I NGTON : Both .

MR . BUCKLE Y: If George Gilder were here , I'd say by their own spirit of phi lanthropy .

MR . HARR I NGTON : I would say both . But what makes me think i t is that the country in the l ast 10 years t hat has had the lowest i nflat i on and unemployment is Austria . I might say it ' s small, it ' s exceptional , but nevertheless , I think they demons trate that it is possible t o cope with an enormou s amount of t ec hnological and occupational change better than we have done . We have been on a roller coaster . And I don ' t think anything is inevitable. I think how people respond po l itically will determine what poss i bil ities that now exist are ac t ual i zed .

MR . BUCKLEY : Aha , but mustn 't they respond pol iticall y in such a way as to welcome the possibility of pluralist thought, which p luralism , of course , is impossible in a socialist society?

MR . HARRINGTON : recent l y . I was

I t hink that's-in France in 1983 .

I have been t o France I t was pluralism drunk.

MR . BUCKLEY: Because you weren 't a banker. If you were a banker in France you would be owned by the sta t e.

MR . HARRINGTON: No , but the fact is that the bankers , the lawyers , everybody was out i n the street yelling that the Gulag had arr i ved in a country which has a free press , free rad i o , fr ee te l evision ; and bankers in the streets yel l ing about the Gulag .

MR . BUCKLEY : Well, eve r ybody ha s differ ent standards and everybody uses inept metapho rs . It i s true that the French government has controlled television from the beginn ing , and De Gaul l e t o ld French television wha t to say i n May of

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1968, and when they didn ' t say it he fired everybody .

MR. HARRINGTON : Right .

MR. BUCKLEY : So the French have--

MR. HARRINGTON : And Mitterrand has actually been somewhat more pluralist about the media .

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes , meanwhile impoverishing the entire country, forbidding people to travel outside unless they get a special permit to take more than $48.50 .

MR . HARRINGTON: other time.

I ' ll come back to talk about Mitterrand some

MR. BUCKLEY: Okay . But let ' s simply agree that if the future is unknown , doesn't it make sense to have a governmental system that licenses as much freedom of activity as possible, which is done even more easily under Reagan than under Harrington?

MR . HARRINGTON: No , because I think that what Reagan did , for example with the economic recovery tax act of 1981 , and I think it's said very clearly in the Council of Economic Advisers' Report of '82-- said, "We're not saving enough to suit my needs, not the market ' s; I will rig the tax system to encourage savings and then the people will freely choose what I want." We call this free enterprise. I think Reagan is a shamefaced planner . And I think that Reagan does not--

MR . BUCKLEY: Well - -

MR . HARRINGTON: -- submit himself to the market any more than- No one does.

MR . BUCKLEY : People who oppose socialist planning are not against the use of common intelligence.

MR . HARRINGTON: Neither are--

MR. BUCKLEY : So watch out for a rainy day .

MR . HARRINGTON: Neither- -

MR . BUCKLEY : No , but socialists make these binding arrangements that commit others unfortunately . If you socialists could commit only your own activities , I would have no objection to you whatsoever , but you also desire to commit theirs--

MR. HARRINGTON : No, but your--

MR . BUCKLEY: -- and mine .

MR . HARRINGTON: Margaret Thatcher was able to denat i onalize things. The Swedish conservatives have said when they get back in power they are going to destroy the wage earner funds. Socialists are profoundly committed to democracy, to change --

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MR. BUCKLEY: Some are . SOme are . An awful lot of them are not.

MR . HARRINGTON: Democratic Socialists are , I' ll put it that way .

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but then you've got to scratch around to find those .

MR . HARRINGTON: I think that there are about 65 parties in the world in the Socialist International led by Willy Brandt which meet that criterion with some millions of members .

MR. BUCKLEY : A place that calls itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hasn ' t had a free day since 1917 .

MR. HARRINGTON : But as you well know , having known me for all these years , I totally agree with you and regard that as an anti - model.

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes, that's--

MR . HARRINGTON: I don ' t know what relevance that is to my socialism .

MR. BUCKLEY: I ' m saying there is a kinship there that you should be perhaps more aware of .

MR. HARRINGTON: What kinship?

MR . BUCKLEY : Well--

MR. HARRINGTON : The Communists hate people like me more than people like you .

MR. BUCKLEY : They like to make rules governing everybody .

MR. HARRINGTON: I think that that totalitarian society is a political, ethical and economic monstrosity.

MR. BUCKLEY: I agree with you . Let's turn to our distinguished examiner . Mr . Alan Reynolds is a graduate of UCLA . He did graduate work in economics at Sacramento State College . I mentioned that he is the chief economist for the supply-side consulting firm of Polyeconomics . He was the vice president and economist for the First National Bank , and I am proud to say he was a former colleague on National Review . Mr . Reynolds.

MR . REYNOLDS: Thank you . Mr . Harrington , I've read your book . You write that taxes on the poor have gone up and deplore that, as I do , and that the poor receive only 13 percent of government social spending. Why , then, should we suppose that additional taxes and additional spending would not merely transfer more income from the poor to the nonpoor , or, to put it a little differently , wouldn't they be better off if we eliminated their taxes, as, say, the Kemp- Kasten bill does, and eliminated , say,

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87 percent of social spending that doesn ' t go to them anyway? Let me extend that question just a little bit . On page 92 you use some old data from Robert Reich- -I warn against that; Reich is always wrong--which says that the u.s . spent 14 percent of GNP on social programs, data readily available from the Social Security Bulletin . What happened was that social spending declined as a share of GNP under Carter. It rose then from 17 . 8 percent of GNP in ' 79 to 19 . 3 percent in 1982 under the Reagan administration . Is this relative growth of the welfare state what you mean by Mr . Reagan ' s meanness?

MR . HARRINGTON : No. Number one, let me say that the social spending for the nonpoor , I am in no way for eliminat i ng because most of it goes to the ag i ng , and if you notice the color of my hair , I am preparing to enjoy my wel l-deserved Social Security benefits when the time comes , and I' m not about to knock that 87 percent , which I am going to be part of, I hope. Secondly , why did various k i nds of social spending rise under Reagan, even though he proposed a 50 percent cut in food stamps? Congress on l y gave him about 13. But even though he tried to cut , why did spending go up? I ' ll tell you why . When you have almost ll percent unemploy ment , that means that people are qualifying for unemployment compensation , people are qualifying for welfare; they're qualifying for Medicaid and food stamps. And I would say that Reagan ' s --

MR . BUCKLEY: So you can hardly b l ame the def i cit on him , in other words?

MR . HARRINGTON : Of course. Of course . I think Reagan did two things to create the deficit . One was to incredibly lower the tax base by for g iving taxes of the rich, and the other was by fighting inflation through the worst recession since the Great Depression . There , I think , you have your i ncreased social spending , not out of any sense of decency , but out of the cruelest possible way of handling inflati on.

MR . REYNOLDS : I would even take it further and say i t rose as a share of GNP because GNP didn ' t r i se, and now , as to whether or not Pres i dent Reagan controls the Federal Reserve, that's a separate question . Let me push that a little bit . You point out that-- this is page 238 - -that by accep t ing a six or seven percent unemployment rate as full emp l oyment as the best we can do, the mainstream liberals-- the Democratic Party--are, as you say , somewhere in between a retreat and a rout. You add that the ideal of almost every serious person on the left would be the abolition of welfare through the creation of a full employment society· . We would not need it , and again , abolition of poverty requires , above all , ful l employment . This is, as you know , the only country in the world- - the only significant country- -that has reduced unemployment in the past year and a half at a l l . We added seven million jobs . We added 15 million over the decade . Europe has added virtually none. Japan hasn ' t done very we l l either in that regard . Why , then, do you hold up the overtaxed , stagnant

wel f are state s o f Europe as a model for us that we should emulate? Let me just cap that by saying --

MR . BUCKLEY : I wish I had asked that question .

MR. RE YNOLDS : Well , I want to cap that by saying President Mitterrand of France, whom you seem to admire, tried a Mondale- like tax surcharge, is peeling it off , cutting marg inal tax rates by five percent because , in his words , those high tax rates "stifle initiative and output ."

MR. HARRINGTON: A couple of points . indeed- - there has be~n over the past capacity of this society to generate Europe . Absolutely true.

MR. BUCKLEY: How come?

Number one , there was decade- -a remarkable jobs much greater than

MR . HARRINGTON: Number two, most of it occurred under Jimmy Carter , as Emma Rothschild documented in an excellent piece in the op-ed pag e of the New York Times quite recently . Number three , most of the jobs we created were not such good jobs . That is to say , in the '70s we created more fast food jobs in Burger King and McDonalds than the totality of jobs in the steel industry. Now, is it better to have a not - so- good job or a bad job than no job? Yes . But is there an economic problem when the way you generate jobs is going to ultimately decrease demand by adding low- paying jobs? Yes, there is. Do I think that the Europeans have found the answer? Nope. Why did Mitterrand fail? There are many reasons why Mitterrand failed, but I'll tell you two . If Mitterrand could , like Ronald Reagan , have ignored an enormous governmental deficit and an enormous external trade deficit , if he had been as immune from the laws of supply and demand and Adam Smith as Ronald Reagan ; I believe that only Ronald Reagan could have put Mitterrand's program through, but I a l so believe enough in Adam Smith to think eventually those deficits, internal and external , are going to come and get us , and that's one of the reasons why I am awaiting the debacle of Reaganomics in the relatively near future.

MR. REYNOLDS: Adam Smith , since you cite him, is, of course , the guy who said that nothing is more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade . One ought to read Smith and Bastiat occasionally on that question.

MR. HARRINGTON : Also The Theory of Moral Sentiments , not just The Wealth of Nations .

MR . REYNOLDS : Yes , that wouldn ' t be a bad idea. This idea that basically--

MR. BUCKLEY ; Adam Smith said that there was nothing crazier than the notion of a balance of trade , intending what?

MR . REYNOLDS: . That ' s a long lecture , Bill .

MR. BUCKLEY : Well , give me a short version of it.

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MR . REYNOLDS : Well , as Bas tiat put it , if the benefit from trade is what you export , you mi ght as we ll load up yo ur ships with automobiles--

MR . BUCKLEY: Yes .

MR . REYNOLDS : -- send the ships out to sea and sink them. You would create jobs i n t he automobile industry .

MR . BUCKLEY: In other words , it has to come back?

MR . REYNOLDS : Yes . I mean , basically , we have loaned goods to t he Soviet Union , t o Argent i na , not just money; and t o pay us back , t hey now have to pay us back with goods , or else we have to give them another loan , which I suggest is not a good i dea . So the trade def i c it is not a problem . It ' s a solution to a problem before of extending too much credit t o these countries and sh i pping goods to them on credi t . A l ong story s hort .

MR. BUCKLEY : That wasn ' t so long .

MR. REYNOLDS: No t too bad. I can go on--

MR . BUCKLEY : I found that tolerable , didn ' t you?

MR . HARRINGTON : Su r e .

MR . REYNOLDS : David Gl asner d i d a good j ob with that i n the New York Times a couple weeks ago . I recommend it to you . On page 60 you estimate tha t three t o seven mi l lion manufactur i ng workers will have to change jobs by the end of the decade , a CBO estimate , I th ink. By the year 2000 , not the decade . Two decades . And you call this , "A pool of people who are in dange r of becoming poo r er . " As an example , you say that the number of stenographer s fe l l by 50 percent from ' 72 to ' SO whi l e the number of computer operators rose by 150 percent . To me that sounds like t he pool is i n danger of becoming rich , but nevermind that for the moment . You conclude then on page 64 that American working people are likely .to face downward social mobil ity . Before it was on l y a d anger. And by the · time we ge t to page 149, "The vast major i ty are being push ed down ." And aga i n , you jus t said that we are substi tuting h i gh - wage jobs for lowwage jobs. It doesn ' t show up in the da ta. Average wage rates are not fall ing . Ave r age di s posa ble i ncomes are no~ fal ling .

MR . BUCKLEY: Are you s aying that demand i s no t in fac t down? Mr . Harrington said that in fact dema nd was down--

!1R. REYNOLDS : I --

MR . BUC KLEY: --because people are mov i ng from t he k ind of wages they earn as steel workers t o t he kind of wage s they earn at McDonald hamburger stands .

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MR . REYNOLD S : Ye s, and h e ' s a l so sayi ng , on average , t hat ' s what ' s happening .

MR. BUCKLEY : Yes .

MR . REYNOLDS: The average wage rates would be switching from $8 to $2- $3 .

MR. BUCKLEY: We ll, can one of you tell me whether the per capi ta dema nd is up or down?

MR . REYNOLDS : Well , I can tell you that average wage rates are up in rea l t erms , and that can ' t be true on average if what he ' s saying i s happening or the average would be down .

MR . BUCKLEY: Do you concede that?

MR . HARRINGTON: There i s a very important point here because I wa s very careful to say-- I was writing the book--or the firs t draft o f the book--at the very bottom o f that recession . I was very c are f ul to s ay that the average out-of- work steel worker is not go i ng to become poor , o nly some , and I the n s pec i f i ed whi c h category I fe l t was most a t risk- - those 45- 50 years of age . That is to say , peop l~ don ' t want t o hire used stee l wo rkers of that age . Secondly , I s ee data t hat unit labor costs are down in the United States . Enormous concessi ons were extrac t ed from unions . And I see da ta- - I don ' t think the a r gument has been sett l ed--but data from Barry Bl ues t one a t Bos t o n Co l lege showing a phenomena which he descr ibed a s slid ing--as people who do not become u nemp l oyed are poor , but who go not so dramatically from steelworker to McDonalds, but from s t ee l worker to electronic components worker . Or I s ee Bob Cuttner ' s data from the Bur eau of Labor Statistics tha t the 20 jobs declining mos t rapid l y in the ·united States pay on the average $5 , 000 a yea r more t han the 20 j obs increas ing mos t rap i d l y . And what I say is that tha t ' s no t on l y a probl em for the ind ividual s who are suf fer ing an . ind i v i dua l and pers onal loss of liv ing standard , it ' s a probl em for a soc i ety whi ch depend s on thei r buy ing ~ower .

MR . BUCKLEY : Why doe sn't that show up in this per capita statistics I just cited--

MR. HARRINGTON : s ecause when you have a recovery-- One of the thing s about these f i gures, they are compared to last year or compared to two years ago. They ' ve go t t o be pretty good because two year s ago was so bad , but my point is that there a r e s ome winners out of th is. Obviously one of the explanations fo r t he election , and the po llsters have confirmed t his , i s t hat the majority of the American peop l e thought they were be tter off , and indeed I would accept they are . I ' ve a l way s insisted that . the increase i n·poverty i s not the majority , but I' ve a lso always insisted that when Reagan gets the f ull t est of reality--and I think it's comi ng , I' ll come back in two years and we ' l l see i f I' m right-- that I think the majority will be losers out of these pr og rams .

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MR. REYNOLDS : Okay . Let me just quickly-- Unit labor cost is the wrong data t o use . Unit labor costs fell because productiv ity r ose . Real output per worker goe s up; real income per worker goes up . Real wages on ave rage are not fa lling , and unti l they are , this is a hypo thesis that you are suggesting . I don ' t mind your saying that they are in danger of becoming poor .

MR . HARRINGTON : No , but I ' m not say ing that . Remember , I ' m saying a minority are suffering .

MR . REYNOLDS : Tha t ' s not what the words say . "The vast majority are being pushed down ."

MR . HARRI NGTON : I don ' t have the t ex t in f r o nt of me . If I sa i d it , I was wrong , and I advise everybody to use that page with great caution .

MR. REYNOLDS : It strikes me that the whole argument i s a presumpt i on . The new American poverty is a presumpt i on agains t technology , a presumption t hat techno l ogy makes us poorer on average . We ' re go ing to subs t itute al l these lowwage jobs in Si l icon Va l ley . And I don ' t see any difference between that and - -

MR . HARRINGTON: I am--

MR. REYNOLDS : --the Luddite and the--

MR . HARRINGTON : No , I am for technology . I am for reducing the working lifetime . I am for g i ving everybody i n the United States sabbaticals , or the kind of t h i ng I had as a college professor . I am for technology , but only i f t he cost of technolog ical innovat i on i s not pr i marily borne by vu l nerabl e working people , their families and the i r communities like the steelwo rkers I talk to in McKeesport , Pennsylvania. That bothers me .

MR . RE YNOLDS : But change is always disloca t ing , is it no t ?

MR . BUCKLEY : No , no , he didn ' t say- - He wasn ' t talking about dislocat ion . He was talking about the inordinat e burden , he says , i s visited on a certain class of people for the t echnol og ical benefi t of other classes.

MR. HARRI NGTON : Righ t .

MR. RE YNOLDS : Okay .

MR . BUCKLEY : Do you acknowledge that this i s h appening or no t ?

MR. REYNOLDS: There have t o be some 40 - yea r - old stee l workers who are in trouble , of course , but when you extend from t hat--

MR. HARRINGTON : I was just speak ing for t hem.

MR . REYNOLDS : Well , you extend to t he aggrega t e economy and

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talk about , o n average , that the average wage rates a nd average incomes are go ing t o fal l. Tha t can ' t be the case . It can ' t be the case in theory , a nd it doesn ' t show up in the data .

MR . HARRI NGTON : See , but t he other thing , t o ge t back to my discussion with Bill , s ince my ou tlook on the fu ture resembles that of Wall St reet rather than the White House , I thi nk that perhaps we have a lready peaked a nd that some of these prob lems will r etu rn . One has t o r emember tha t in November of 19 82 , whe n unfortunate l y the pres i dent ia l e l ection d id not t ake place , Mr . Reagan was less popul ar than J i mmy Carter

.was two years into his term.

MR. BUCKLEY : Which showed t ha t there wasn ' t much foresig ht among the voters at that po int?

MR . HARRINGTON : No , which showed that-- I think Reagan l u c ked i nto the recovery . Ni xon in ' 7 2--you ' ve go t t o g ive the old g uy credit-- he created a recovery to e l e ct himself with wag e and pr i ce controls , Keynesian Spending . He go t Arthur Burns to t urn on the sp i go t over at the Fed: I think that Reagan blundered lnto a dema nd - side recove r y , hav ing talked a supply- side recover y , and was politically smart e nough to say , "See , I did it , " and the American peop l e , judg ing short - run results , bought the argume nt, but I think the argument is going to u nrave l in the no t - t oo- distant future.

MR . BUCKLEY : Therefore we should inva lidate democracy?

MR . HARRINGTON : Oh , no, no , no. Therefore i n 1986 we should g i ve the Democrats control of the Senate and a much l arger majority in the Hou se , and in 1 988 we shouid get a new pres i dent who agrees with me rather than with you .

MR. BUCKLEY: Ma ybe J immy Carter would consent to run again since you say he--

MR . HARRINGTON: That ' s not my-- Back to Jimmy Carter is not my slogan .

MR . BUCKLEY: Mr . Rey nolds , you have anothe r two minu t es.

MR . REYNOLDS: Okay . We ll , you claim that the ' 83 -' 84 recovery wa s , as you say , a demand s i de . You even use the ph rase "investment bust " in the book . Real inves t ment in plant and equipment ros e at a 16 . 4 percent annual rate . In the previous four recoveries i t rose a t a six percent annual r ate . I t ' s a l most t riple the normal , and it started from a very l ow level of capacity ut i lization . How do you reconcile t hat reality wi th the rhetoric?

MR . HARRI NGTON : That there was disinvestment in 1982 and that I read t he bus i ness press ent husiastically . It ' s a good source of i nformat i on . As I read Bus i ness Week--

24 ©Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

MR . BUCKLEY : Like undertakers reading the obituary pages?

MR. HARRINGTON : --and the Wall Street Journal and the London Economist . Throughout-- At the beginning of ' 83 the White House was waiting for demand to go up and abso lute l y investment d i d go up after demand in an o l d - fashioned , Democratic , left , Keynesian way , st imu lated the investment a nd that one had cheapened the price of capital , which is what Reagan d i d , but this eventual l y had an i mpact . Of course it did . But my point is his entire scenario and the assumption , which is still there-- And by the way , a person who agrees with me complete l y i s Herbert Stein , wh o was chairman of the Economic Advisers ' Committee under Nixon . He calls Reagan ' s po litics " the economics of joy ." The London Economis t just this week cal l s it " the politics of the free lunch ," and I find it ironic that a Rep ubli can conserva tive is t he l eading advocate of the economi cs of the free lunch i n the United States .

MR. REYNOLDS : I f i nd it ironic that you c ite Nixon's economics as a good exampl e or , for that matter , Br itish economi cs as a good example of what we ought to follow .

MR . HARRINGTON : I c ite --

MR. REYNOLDS: They have 13~ percen t unemployment over there .

MR . HARRINGTON: That ' s Margaret Thatch er . That ' s European Reaganomics .

MR . REYNOLDS : They haven ' t fol l owed the kind of policies t hat we have followed in th i s country . Do I have another mi nu t e?

MR . BUCKLEY : You have ano ther minute.

~R . REYNOLDS : Okay . You point out t ha t Amer i ca lags behind 10 other advanced nations i n terms of per capita weal th , wh ich I r egard as a bizarre stat i stic , and has the fewes t economic and social rights . The question is , you mentioned Austria , but which oth er country would you like to live in or would you sugges t that other peopl e live in, and , for that matter , Nould you accept a prepaid one- way ticket?

~R . HARRINGTON : I am such a profound American patriot that I Na nt to l i ve no place but t hi s soc i ety because I be l ieve this wonderful soc i ety can be so much better than it is 1nder Ronald Reagan.

1R . REYNOLDS : Very good .

1R . HARRINGTON : I don't want to go t o Sweden or France or \ustria or anywhere else . I want t o fight here.

1R. BUCKLEY : Yes , I ' ve never found that really-- I don 't hin k a question like that really works because the process f self - extrication-- I mea n, there are some people who , ree to leave the Sovi et Union , wou l dn 't, and Svetlana j us t

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went back. So I think the cultural and sentimental ties have a huge, i f you like , economic value or even political value.

MR. HARRINGTON: And I like being an Amer ican.

MR . BUCKLEY : Yes , only about f i v e percent of the Amer i can people , so,I'm told, ev~r ~xercise their freedom of speech . That do~sn t ~ean that ~t ~sn't a t erribly valuabl e quality ofd~mer ~can l~fe . Did we gang up on you , Al an, a t t h is en .

MR. REYNOLDS: No , n o , fair enough . Fair enoug h. that if some o ther country is doing a better job, ·find out which one it is so we can do it, t oo .

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, so that we can- -

It' s just we wan t t o

MR. REYNGLDS: They ' re copying us, no t the other way around .

MR . BUCKLEY: Sure , so that we can observe the ir techniq ues to the extent that those techniques woul d be tran s f erable .

MR. HARRINGTON : Exactly .

MR . BUCKLEY: We have t o c l ose . I want t o t hank lad i es and gentl emen fr om the Oratory Preparator y School of Summit, Ne~ J~rsey; Mr . Alan Reynolds of Po l yeconomi cs ; and my pr~n~~pal g uest, Mr. Michael Harrington, author of The New Amer~can . Poverty . Thank you .

26 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

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